


The Headaches, the Heartaches, the Backaches, the Flops

by Maidenjedi



Series: Like Show Business [1]
Category: Galaxy Quest (1999)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 15:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwen DeMarco and the first rise and fall of <i>Galaxy Quest</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Headaches, the Heartaches, the Backaches, the Flops

**Author's Note:**

  * For [captainsblog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainsblog/gifts).



> Written for captainsblog, NYR 2012. Title from "There's No Business Like Show Business."

-audition-

She was the sixty-second person to audition for the role of Tawny Madison. Her agent - really just an old woman with a terribly fake Scottish accent who claimed she got Marsha Mason her first Hollywood gig and who proposed to take fifteen percent if Gwen ever got a paycheck - told her not to get her hopes up; this was the nineteenth audition Gwen had gone on for a television series. Twentieth if you counted the audition for a voice part on _The Scooby-Doo Show_. And sure, a week went by with no callback and Gwen was eating ramen and trying to decide if it would be worth taking that job in Malibu to make rent. She'd done her share of dirty phone calls and peep-show-style dancing, so maybe soft porn wouldn't be that bad.

It wasn't going to get that bad, she knew it really wouldn't, but when her agent called to let her know they wanted her for _Galaxy Quest_ , as a regular, in the Lt. Tawny Madison role, Gwen was relieved enough to cry.

The network was trying to capitalize on the success of science fiction films, and the pilot for this show was going to be shot on the cheap, on a backlot scheduled for demolition. There were half a dozen people claiming to be "the" writer, and a tired-looking, bespectacled man in his thirties who seemed to be the man with the idea in the first place. "You won't need to talk to Reggie, he wrote the comic and the director is letting him on set as a courtesy, but don't listen to anything he says, he's not part of the team," said the director's assistant. Gwen nodded and shrugged at Reggie, who gave her a half-smile and shouted "At least read it!" at her. And later, much later, Alex told her it was actually pretty good and worth reading, and Gwen was just awed that the original Tawny Madison did more than simply repeat the computer's lines.

But that was later, and right now Gwen just knew that she was the only woman on set, and she had her own trailer, and her name was on it. An actual, by-god star was on the door! 

-

-the first season-

The first read-through went well, or maybe as well as can be expected with a half-finished script that was later thrown out entirely. Jason Nesmith was as dreamy in person as Gwen had thought he might be, and Alexander Dane was as elegant as she'd always heard he was. Little Tommy Webber - he was just seven when the show finally premiered that fall - wasn't as precocious as everyone always said child actors were. And Fred Kwan, well, he was a little weird, but it was Hollywood and it was 1978, and everyone knew someone who dropped acid on set. 

They wanted her hair lighter, someone told her, longer and with more flip to it. Tawny Madison is going to be like a Charlie's Angel, like Farrah Fawcett except in space, said one man, a producer's lackey or maybe a network goon. All Gwen heard was that they thought she could be like Farrah Fawcett, and wasn't that enough for a girl whose biggest role in Hollywood to date had been as a serial killer's victim in a made-for-tv movie, only the scene had been cut? 

The day she called home to say she'd gotten a pilot was the same day one of the writers, a Steve Reynolds, asked her out, and everything was going so well she didn't hear her dad's cough and her mom yelling obscenities in the background. Almost.

Steve didn't turn out to be a very nice guy, but he was also canned before the show aired, and if on some show he wrote for in 1984 Gwen thought she recognized herself in a whore he wrote off with a gruesome murder, well, that was Hollywood.

The show wasn't _that_ good. The scripts were cheesy and usually rip-offs of something better, and they had a revolving door of writers ("screenplay by committee," said Jason). But they all felt like this was just the beginning of something, even if, on some level, everyone around them knew better and didn't say so. It really wasn't _that_ good. It was hard to admit in the first year, before anyone really noticed them and before they had "fans." Before Jason became an arrogant ass and Alexander began to hint that he might ask to be written off. 

But that first year? Jason was enthusiastic, and Alexander was amazing, and they'd all fallen a little bit in love with Tommy, who worked twice as hard as he probably needed to and had a "system" for how he "flew" the NSEA _Protector_. Fred was high, but he showed up on time and knew his lines. The cardboard props and grease paint aliens were funny to Gwen, and the writers didn't make her do scenes half-dressed and she had lines outside of repeating the computer. Jason was cute and the night the pilot aired and the network announced a 22-episode order, and they were featured (in a blurb, on page five) in Variety, Gwen kissed him. And he tasted like success and the good wine, because the network had sent a bottle to his dressing room. 

Gwen did what they asked; she kept off any weight, not that she was ever eating enough anyway or sitting still long enough to gain any real weight, and she lightened her already blonde hair. She got manicures and did fad fitness routines. Her role on the show was a bit monotonous - all the fun stuff went to Jason and Alex and sometimes Fred - but she had steady work and mid-season they were told they'd been given a second. Their little show about a starship crew was gaining traction and did reasonably well in the Nielsens each week, so they even got moved to a Tuesday evening spot (such an improvement over Fridays). In May, after a great month of episodes leading to a strong finale in which Tawny actually went off ship with Commander Taggart on a fact-finding mission, Gwen was interviewed for TV Guide and it seemed to go pretty well; it lasted almost two hours and the reporter was friendly. 

-

-the second season-

It was too good to last.

She'd come back from hiatus to find a tighter uniform, and fewer lines (they didn't even have her repeat the computer as often). In fact, in the first scene of the first episode in the second season, Lt. Tawny Madison is captured by Rwefurians and held for ransom, made to sit spread-eagled on a marble (spray-painted) throne and chained at the throat, her uniform strategically ripped. She complained, but the network people and the new team of writers (no more revolving door) held fast, and the producer sent her a very unsubtle message when he squeezed her ass one day and leaned over to whisper that there were plenty of "tits in this city that could fill that suit, sweetheart."

Of course, that was the same day the TV Guide interview had come out, and she had made the cover - or her breasts had. And they'd made the story, too, only about two lines of which were even about her directly. A two-hour interview (and a drunken blow job, she recalled bitterly) and all she got was a story about how well she fit into that fucking uniform.

Jason showed up late and hungover every day for the first week, and Alexander complained that Jason didn't pull his punches during their fight in "The Suns of Warvan" (an episode for which Alexander was later nominated for an Emmy, not that he came close to winning). Fred was arrested for cocaine possession, but he had a good lawyer and the network bailed him out and only one of the tabloids bothered with the story. Tommy was now eight and a bit shrill on set, since he'd done a film in his summer off and now Disney was talking about casting him in a remake of _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. They had good days and good episodes, but Gwen was always a damsel in distress and maybe she was tired of it, maybe she wanted lines and backstory and action. She just wasn't a child star and she wasn't the lead.

No, she was definitely not that.

Jason offered to take her home one day, and it had been a bad day, a chained-to-an-alien-while-barely-dressed day, and Gwen had one too many drinks and so did Jason. The sex wasn't anything spectacular, and he left before the sun rose, and they didn't talk about it. It happened again. And then again. One more time, just this once, she said as he went down on her on the kitchen floor. And then she wasn't drunk that other time, he was sober as a churchlady the next time, and it was a thing between them.

Until it wasn't. Gwen caught him in an elevator with his hand up the skirt of a Gemerian moon princess, the day after he told her he wasn't ready for a real relationship.

The second season did even better in the Nielsens, and someone higher up thought they should order twenty-four episodes for the third season, and hiatus was going to be shorter. But Gwen did get a role in a romantic comedy with Dudley Moore, and if it was just a secretary role with four lines, they were lines, and the scene wasn't cut.

-

-the third season-

Jason was on the cover of People. The featured star of the "Ten Most Eligible Bachelors in Television." He outranked Alan Alda and Tom Selleck (until later when they put out the "Hottest Men in Hollywood" list - then, he didn't rank at all).

"Hey guys, did you see it?"

He drove up in a new car on the first day of filming for the third season, and he flashed the magazine at them (which of course they'd all seen, it was hard to miss), and tossed them all copies as he got out.

And he'd _signed_ them. That's the kind of year they had, that third season.

Alexander was serious, he really meant to quit. But he got a bonus and it shut him up quick enough. In fact, Jason and Fred got bonuses, too, and if they didn't know whether Tommy did it was only because his mother had stopped coming by the set so often talking about such things. 

Gwen did not get a bonus. And she fought with the network over a decision to make her wear a mini-skirt for her uniform; it got so nasty that they benched her for two episodes during sweeps, having her "kidnapped" (again) and sending the crew to look for her on a hostile and uncharted planet (again). 

They had fans now, and a fan club. Well. There was a Galaxy Quest Unofficial Fan Club, for which they'd all signed cast photos to be raffled off for charity, and there was a Peter Quincy Taggart Fan Club, for which Jason was hailed to a few events. They all got fan letters, and hate mail from time to time. And Jason had been "stalked" two or three times and suddenly needed a bodyguard.

Alex was skeptical. "What are they going to do to you, Jason? Throw edible panties at you?"

"They were threatening me!" 

"With what, their fake breasts?" muttered Gwen.

The scripts were losing focus; there were two episodes in the later part of the spring that Gwen was almost sure they'd done before. And there was a weird episode about Dr. Lazarus' sex life, which was apparently a ritual of chanting and incense, and the ratings tanked after that. The network, nervous about their investment, took it out on Gwen, and the finale featured Tawny and Peter in a liplock, forced together by alien forces. The ratings didn't improve, probably because the network had also moved them opposite _Happy Days_ late in the season. 

Gwen was dating again, a writer for _Magnum P.I._ , and she tried hard not to tell him that it was only because she wanted to meet Tom Selleck. But it was okay, Eddie was nice and he liked her, and talked about writing scripts for her, lovely quiet films about women with guts and smarts who didn't need nice tits to make it in their worlds. She started thinking about life after _Galaxy Quest_ and asked her agent to look out for movies for her, and she auditioned a couple of times, and actually got a callback on a Neil Simon movie, but was ultimately beat out by Dinah Manoff (she was too old for it anyway, thought Gwen, and she was right). 

The hiatus never looked so good.

-  
-the fourth season-

First, Fred was arrested, again, and this time had to do rehab. He wasn't in the first three episodes, and they got letters and the studio got calls, and there was talk that he'd be written out altogether. But they let him come back and Fred was still Fred, only quieter. Tommy's mother was back on set and she wouldn't let Tommy talk to Fred. 

Alex had done an off-off-Broadway show that flopped after five weeks, and Jason had made the talk show circuit, including a really well-received Johnny Carson spot. Gwen had broken it off with Eddie, who had written a script for someone else entirely, and she had done more auditions, and asked for more, though she was getting fewer callbacks and hadn't landed a role yet. "You will," said Alex, an optimist when it suited him. 

They'd gotten an order for twenty episodes, supposedly because the network had signed a new sports contract and they had to work around it, and they got put up against _Magnum, P.I._. It was the kiss of death, really. Fans wrote that they were tired of the schedule changes and that they couldn't find the show, and there was a new producer and they were back to a revolving door of writers.

The rumor was that they'd be cancelled if the Nielsens were still dismal after episode 70. At that point, anything already in the can would air, but they'd be job-hunting come morning. 

When Gwen got the script for the _Omega 13_ episode, she was surprised. It was good. It was damned good. This could redeem the whole show, and the second part was due to be the seventieth episode.

The writer - just one - was credited as "R. Piersynski." The very same Reggie who had created the concept in the first place, and he'd managed to get this in because the show was on its last legs and everyone figured why not. It was the equivalent of sending in the aging veteran with the bum knee who sat on the bench all season. 

They filmed both parts, anxious to see how it would go. Gwen was excited; the script had her back in the pantsuit, and Tawny Madison was set up to do the rescuing for a change. With Dr. Lazarus injured and Commander Taggart missing, Lt. Madison would have her day, rescuing the Commander and going with him to retrieve the Omega 13 device. Gwen acted her heart out that day, and when the script called for Commander Taggart to kiss Tawny Madison, non-coerced by alien forces, for the first time, she didn't even mind.

Someone whispered "Emmy" when they watched the playback. Gwen almost let herself hope, just a little.

The network decided to air the episodes out of sequence, and pushed back the _Omega 13_ episodes so they would be 80 and 81. That decision cost the cast their jobs. The seventieth episode that aired was about Tech Sgt. Chen's return, a weak plot about Effgu flu and a race of aliens who seemed to be living in a permanent Prohibition-era United States. Ratings that night were pitiful, the lowest in a year, and the network wasted no time. To make matters worse, the second half of the two-parter never aired, so the scenes Gwen might have caught the Academy's attention with were lost to history.

-

If Gwen DeMarco had any regrets, they were mostly to do with everything she didn't do because she'd been so busy with _Galaxy Quest_. She might have done more films, she might have gotten a better series. She hadn't had a really good date in a few years - she refused to think of Jason Nesmith in that context - and she hadn't gotten particularly famous.

But the summer after the cancellation, the Galaxy Quest Fan Club and the Peter Quincy Taggart Fan Club merged, and they wrote to the cast and asked them to come to a convention. For the fans, they said, of that wonderful show you all did.

The first time Gwen DeMarco saw other women, actual grown women, dressed to look like Lt. Tawny Madison, she figured it might have all been worth it, even if at best this was cult status. Even if they only asked her what it was like working with (kissing) Jason Nesmith. Though there were a few who told her they'd been humiliated on her behalf when the skirt uniform entered the picture, or all those times she'd been chained and half-naked and rescued by Commander Taggart or Dr. Lazarus. 

"I mean, really. As if a computer officer on a ship like the NSEA _Protector_ needs a man to help her. Tawny Madison would save herself!" said one enthusiastic fan.

Gwen just smiled and said she hoped so, too.

Maybe one day, that is exactly what Tawny Madison, and the woman who played her, would do.

-

**Author's Note:**

> The Neil Simon movie that Gwen DeMarco auditioned for was "I Ought to Be in Pictures," and the role was that of Libby Tucker. Dinah Manoff really did play that part.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Like No Business I Know (the Climbing Uphill Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4211007) by [airspaniel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/airspaniel/pseuds/airspaniel)




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